The Gospel According to André

An extraordinary life detailed in a film that stays on the surface.

The
title of Kate Novack’s film about André Leon Talley is strikingly
unexpected but the movie itself is far more routine than one would
hope. As a key figure in the world of fashion, Talley has turned up in
a number of documentaries, most memorably in The September Issue (2009). However, as though promising us something different this time around, he is heard at the start of The Gospel According to André
declaring that the things that matter to him are beauty and style, not
fashion. In any case Talley’s life has a special significance of its
own given that he is a black man from the south who, having been raised
in North Carolina, has come to exemplify how such a background need not
impede one from becoming a noted figure and one famed as much in Paris
as in New York.

Talley
is a great talker who has a larger-than-life persona - and not just
because he is very tall and has become bloated in later life (he is 68
now and we see him seeking to lose weight). Yet he is also reserved
about himself and, while his manner is that of a gay man, that is a
label that he has dismissed. In that respect, his religious background
could have influenced him, but this film never gets him to talk
directly on the issue beyond an expression of regret that he has never
been in love.

Consequently,
race and sexuality feature here less than one would expect and what we
get is a standard career résumé incorporating historical footage and
fresh interviews with friends and colleagues, although the latter tend
to be brief and unmemorable. For something idiosyncratic we need to
turn to the words of the man himself as when he is ready to point out
to somebody who stumbled over his surname that it is “Talley as in
Talleyrand”. This film does contain telling tributes to the grandmother
who raised him and to his mentor the splendid Diana Vreeland, yet the
old footage of Vreeland and contributions from the likes of Anna
Wintour and Manolo Blahnik only serve to remind one of more rewarding
films about fashion in which they have appeared. An element of some
novelty in this context does turn up towards the end of Novack’s film.
That’s when in the last of four titled sections it introduces material
about Donald Trump. It is amusing to hear Talley approving Melania
Trump’s dress at the inauguration regardless of his feelings about her
husband, but this footage like so much here is relatively superficial.
Even so, the fact the Talley’s life has been such an unusual one makes
the film watchable enough and, despite that admission that he has never
been in love, it does become clear that Talley has loved at least two
people, one being his grandmother and the other Mrs Vreeland.